So far I have chiefly followed Warburton, but there is an
important point which seems not to have been observed. All
Hamlet's praise of the speech is in the closest agreement with
his conduct and words elsewhere. His later advice to the
player (III. ii.) is on precisely the same lines. He is to
play to the judicious, not to the crowd, whose opinion is
worthless. He is to observe, like the author of Aeneas'
speech, the 'modesty' of nature. He must not tear a 'passion'
to tatters, to split the ears of the incompetent, but in the
very tempest of passion is to keep a temperance and
smoothness. The million, we gather from the first passage,
cares nothing for construction; and so, we learn in the second
passage, the barren spectators want to laugh at the clown
instead of attending to some necessary question of the play.
Hamlet's hatred of exaggeration is marked in both passages.
And so (as already pointed out, p. 133) in the play-scene,
when his own lines are going to be delivered, he impatiently
calls out to the actor to leave his damnable faces and begin;
and at the grave of Ophelia he is furious with what he thinks
the exaggeration of Laertes, burlesques his language, and
breaks off with the words,
Nay, an thou'lt mouth,
I'll rant as well as thou.
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